Wednesday, January 26, 2005

This must be what space travel feels like.

I think I know what it must feel like to travel great distances through space on a long term mission in extremely large spacecraft. I will get to why I feel this way in a minute but first here is a little back story.
I currently work in a large office building within a still larger office complex with literally tens of thousands of other employees all working for the same company. And at some point in the not to distant past the planners of such work environments decided the best way to make this physically and financially feasible is to put each individual employee into a standard workspace with standard configurations including standard technologies with standard software loads and standard furniture to facilitate each employees daily functions with as little deviation from the standard as possible. This is known to some as Cubelife, or working in a Cube Farm. Because the wide open space of the buildings floor(which can be tens of thousand of square feet on any one floor of a multi floor building) is completely occupied by dozens, no hundreds if not thousands of ten by ten temporary office spaces. All made from modular sectional walls in hued consistently with bland earth tones comprised completely of synthetic materials. Don’t let me give off the wrong impression the space provided is not so confining as say a veil pen used to house domestic cattle in an effort to assist in the production of tender portions of high priced beef products. For one person with their daily activities limited to typing on a keyboard and talking on a phone there is ample space provided. And I don’t intend to imply that these surrounding are completely devoid of all creature comforts, in fact most needs have been thought of and addressed. Restrooms are located throughout each floor at short walking distances, even smaller rooms with a door and a phone are provided to enable private conversations. In addition to these needs there are “Pop sites” or small galleys with refrigerators, vending machines and microwave ovens in various strategic points conveniently located in the same place from one floor to the next much like you might have on a large passenger vessel. My point is that this kind of work environment can not be compared to working in a coal mine without a focused stretch of the imagination. However back to my analogy of the space ship, I rarely leave the building once I arrive shortly after the sun has risen until the end of my day shortly before the sun has set. Due in part to the fact that most all daily needs required to support a human life form can be performed within the confines of the mother ship, I mean building. And many others that could be considered luxuries such as physical fitness activities, dry cleaning for your space suit or shirts, even a minor doctor’s visit can be addressed within a two-hundred yard walk to one of the other buildings. The thing that ends up creeping you out is the fact that you have little if any exposure to vistas of the out of doors let alone direct sunlight. And the constant sound of rushing air through the massive heating and air conditioning system that is ever present regardless of your location within the building is reminiscent of the background thruster sound heard in most well produced science fiction space epic films. Plus there is a team of at least two dozen people assigned to each building for the sole purpose of keeping it free of any evidence of use, the cleaning crew as it were are both very thorough and busy keeping each corner and crack in of the building clean to the point of suggesting sterility much like the same space craft pictured in your favorite yonder reaching adventure. My personal vantage point is further influenced by the double digit number of monitors required to perform my job function, so there is the added impersonal aspect of watching monitors like one of the operators in the Matrix. Who has no immediate value to the mission by which all of mankind will be save except answering the phone when the oh so aesthetically pleasing hero of the universe calls, then pushing the proper button allowing them to return from the harrowing trial.
Okay maybe I have spent too much time thinking about all this but how much time can you spend surfing the web each day?

1 comment:

monkistan said...

my office only has vending machines on one floor. i am moving into an office today though. no more cube life for me (in theory). nice site. i'll have to visit more often. thanks for stopping by.